Is it possible to enjoy FFXIV if I only like endgame content?

[Vakna]

It is objectively false that the average raider goes into the raid day 1 with the gear needed to clear a mythic raid.

That's not what I said though, I said that you get what you need by clearing the raid. If you get to boss 13 then you already have loot from bosses 1 through 12. My entire point here was to disprove the post I quoted where the person said that you had to grind for weeks in World of Warcraft to overcome an imaginary gear wall in order to clear a raid. No such wall exists. Skill walls exist, time spent walls exist, gear walls do not. Play the game like a normal person, and that is all you need.

Also, just so we're clear, a player going into a mythic raid in WoW is expected to have already cleared the previous difficulties of said raid, you don't just go straight into mythic naked, and with that assumption, they are already geared enough from clearing the previous difficulties even disregarding the gear the raid will collect by defeating bosses on mythic - which is a lot.

[NineSpine]

That's not what I said though, I said that you get what you need by clearing the raid. If you get to boss 13 then you already have loot from bosses 1 through 12. My entire point here was to disprove the post I quoted where the person said that you had to grind for weeks in World of Warcraft to overcome an imaginary gear wall in order to clear a raid. No such wall exists. Skill walls exist, time spent walls exist, gear walls do not. Play the game like a normal person, and that is all you need.

The idea that heroic or mythic are tuned for a week one clear by the average raider is just deluded and deranged. It is not in touch with reality. Mythic in particular is clearly, obviously tuned with repeated clears and the gear rewards from that in mind. This is why wow has such an absurd level of gear inflation and ff14 does not.

You can prefer wows model without engaging in dishonesty about how it works. It is fine to prefer how wow does it. It is not fine to just make shit up.

[eschatological]

I raided in a world 500 guild that cleared heroic week 1 every tier. Heroic in WoW isn't hard. Neither is Savage.

And we always got 2-4 bosses down in mythic in week 1 of mythic.

[NineSpine]

I raided in a world 500 guild that cleared heroic week 1 every tier. Heroic in WoW isn't hard. Neither is Savage.

And we always got 2-4 bosses down in mythic in week 1 of mythic.

That's wonderful for you. I can play Jaco Pastorius solos on bass. The fact that I can do that doesn't mean it magically becomes easy for everyone else or mean Jaco bass lines become a joke. This is a stupid argument.

[Wrecktangle]

Basically the title. I don't care about the story, and the more casual content like housing, RP, and glamour really doesn't interest me. I literally only want to Raid. Is this really possible or am I going to have a bad time?

I'm a pretty habitual raid logger in both games so let me offer my POV. I love FF14's raiding content. It's fun, its flashy, and it's just challenging enough to be a good time. I love learning and clearing the fights and then taking a break or playing another game. I have a few other major hobbies so it's nice that it doesn't eat my time. I wish it was a little more dynamic and less scripted and sometimes a bit less obtuse on the mechanics.

The alliance raids are for max level characters and they drop progression gear. They are endgame.

They don't drop progression gear. They drop catch up gear for non raiders to equalize the ilvl gap in between raid tiers.

I find FF14s encounters far more imaginative and immersive than WoW, which often ends up as a battle of picking the right weakauras and paying almost no attention to the actual battlefield.

Subjective.

Yeah I super love when someone else makes a mistake so I die and spend 8 minutes staring at the ground waiting for this epic "war of attrition" to end in the same failure it does 99.9% of the time. What an epic experience.

Yeah I super love when someone else makes a mistake so the entire party just wasted 12 minutes because one person died. What an epic experience.

Being a bit hypocritical here. Out of curiosity though, what fight does someone else in WoW make a mistake where it kills you (and not anyone else), and you sit on the floor for 8 minutes and wipe because of that single death? I tried thinking of examples but I couldn't come up with any.

I can give you about 2 dozen+ examples in FF14 of my actual example though.

In a nine month period, FF14 can get 8 normal/savage bosses, 3 extreme trials, and a 4 boss alliance raid. That's 15 bosses.

Slightly misleading. Assuming T = 0 right, you could probably get double that in WoW since you have a raid at T = 0 and then another comes about 9 months later right?

Almost everyone I play FF14 with is a former WoW raider. All of them love alliance raids, in particular the newest one. Given the way you post this may be shocking, but you don't speak for everyone else.

Why say you don't speak for everyone else lol immediately after citing your own anecdote as if you do. That's fucking comical and hypocritical.

Fun fact, I hate alliance raids.

Yes, really, and that opinion is shared by all the former wow raiders I play FF14 with. All of us were very exhausted with playing the UI rather than playing the fight. We were all exhausted with weakauaras being more important than playing the game well. We were all exhausted with needless gear walls that prevent us from completing content. We were all exhausted with a raid model that expected us to run the same raid 50 times on multiple difficulties.

Meh, sounds like you're probably trying to leverage your "friends" to bolster your argument, but it comes off super spurious.

It's a good thing I never said that then.

If someone asks the difference between wow and ff14 raiding, the function of addons is incredibly important to the difference.

Disagree. I find that the raid size, hyper-scripted timeline, and it's all DPS to be the major differences and the ones more frequently discussed.

Endgame means “things you do at max level”. I don’t know where this definition of “only the most hardcore CE content” comes from. I’m not pointing fingers at you for this goalpost shift, but it seems to be becoming common here.

I'd argue if anything that the goalposts were moved by you lol. It's fairly common knowledge that alliance raids aren't considered traditional raiding by the raiding community; which was the actual topic of the discussion based on the OPs ask. You'll find some support for Extreme trials, and overwhelming support for savage/ultimates, but little to none for alliance raids.

Also too bad Alliance raids are infinitely more complex than LFR. Sure, that might not mean much, but the LFR-comparison has always been silly. WoW's LFR is difficult only because you have to deal with half a raid that doesn't want to be there and another half that literally isn't even there. Alliance raids are less punishing because it's easier to recover, but they are inherently more complex.

"Infinitely more complex?" Come on now, that straight hyperbole. They're absolutely MORE complex than LFR, but they're considerably less than normal mode raids in WoW and if we're being honest much more closely resemble LFR than normal so they're the best fit for an LFR equivalent. This is support by the fact that they're mostly mindless, half the players are AFK, and hardly useful for any progression oriented player.

Sounds like you don’t believe Blizzard is capable of coherent encounter design.

Blizzards encounter design has issues for sure, but I'm not sure coherent would be one of their issues. If anything it's one of their stronger points. FF14 could honestly learn to be a little less obtuse in just what the debuffs say and do and some consistency in how they handle certain mechanics.

Alliance Raids are mindless AFK bosses?

Yes. It's why ACT shows me on average 20-25% of the people in the instance are not putting any effort in and yet we have no wipes and still clear.

1. A new 4 boss raid every 6 months. These bosses will, in general, be somewhere in the ballpark of wow's heroic difficulty. The fights will be a bit longer than wow on average and are more likely to have very distinct multi-phase designs, so you can get more packaged into one fight on average than you may be used to. This is how you get BiS gear. These raids are 8-man with two tanks and two healers.

Minor correction. It was almost 8 months between 5.0-5.2, 10 months between 5.2-5.4, and 12 months between 5.4 and 6.0, putting the average at almost 10 months per tier.

You aren't completely wrong, but Ultimates definitely can be as hard as Mythic end-boss. Dragonsong is proof of that.

Anyone who says that Ultimates aren't equivalent to end game mythic bosses is being an idiot. It's hard to compare them in the sense that they are very different experiences and their difficulty stems from completely different design paradigms (and why I prefer Mythic end bosses over ultimates), but they're absolutely both very challenging.

The fabled master baiter strikes again. You always bring a smile to my face.

The poster was guilty of saying some dumb shit, but the piece you quoted I don't see anything bad about that take mind clarifying?

Best take, honestly. And if someone -wants- to do it, there are discords dedicated to it.

A relatively small portion of the player base does Baldesian Arsenal and Delubrum Reginae Savage, but there are discords dedicated to it with very dedicated players. If you WANT to do something, if you WANT to raid old content, or content people don't often do, there are tools for finding like minded people.

It took me longer to find a group to do BA than it did the clear the savage tier lol despite pouring over every instance, LS, FC, static, and discord I could find.

The Nier raids are amazing and the new one is amazing as wel.

Bleh, I hated them and I even like the Nier games, but mostly because they take so much longer than all the other 24 mans to complete especially when a quarter of the team is AFK.

[NineSpine]

They don't drop progression gear. They drop catch up gear for non raiders to equalize the ilvl gap in between raid tiers.

I run it every week to gear up alt jobs.

Subjective.

Which are more enjoyable is subjective. The fact that wow has become an add-on fest is not.

Yeah I super love when someone else makes a mistake so the entire party just wasted 12 minutes because one person died. What an epic experience.

Being a bit hypocritical here. Out of curiosity though, what fight does someone else in WoW make a mistake where it kills you (and not anyone else), and you sit on the floor for 8 minutes and wipe because of that single death? I tried thinking of examples but I couldn't come up with any.

I can give you about 2 dozen+ examples in FF14 of my actual example though.

You need me to explain how healers can fail you and you end up dead in WoW?

Slightly misleading. Assuming T = 0 right, you could probably get double that in WoW since you have a raid at T = 0 and then another comes about 9 months later right?

I stated facts.

Why say you don't speak for everyone else lol immediately after citing your own anecdote as if you do. That's fucking comical and hypocritical.

Fun fact, I hate alliance raids.

Then it's rad that they are optional, isn't it?

Meh, sounds like you're probably trying to leverage your "friends" to bolster your argument, but it comes off super spurious.

Why should I care about your experience if you declare mine is spurious?

Disagree. I find that the raid size, hyper-scripted timeline, and it's all DPS to be the major differences and the ones more frequently discussed.

I didn't say there weren't other difference. The role of addons is a major one. This isnt debatable.

I'd argue if anything that the goalposts were moved by you lol. It's fairly common knowledge that alliance raids aren't considered traditional raiding by the raiding community; which was the actual topic of the discussion based on the OPs ask. You'll find some support for Extreme trials, and overwhelming support for savage/ultimates, but little to none for alliance raids.

Making up a "community" that agrees with you isn't an argument. Alliance raids are raids by any definition. If you dislike them, that's great, but they are raids. I don't know where this weird impulse to redefine simple terms to make your arguments sound better comes from. I don't like arena in wow, but it would be really really weird for me to start constructing arguments that arena isn't pvp just to make myself feel better about disliking it.

"Infinitely more complex?" Come on now, that straight hyperbole. They're absolutely MORE complex than LFR, but they're considerably less than normal mode raids in WoW and if we're being honest much more closely resemble LFR than normal so they're the best fit for an LFR equivalent. This is support by the fact that they're mostly mindless, half the players are AFK, and hardly useful for any progression oriented player.

Putting aside crystal tower, if you AFK in alliance raids, you inspect the floor for the rest of the fight. Some people do this, sure, but most LFR encounters as a DPS you can stand still and do your rotation and suffer no consequences.

Blizzards encounter design has issues for sure, but I'm not sure coherent would be one of their issues. If anything it's one of their stronger points. FF14 could honestly learn to be a little less obtuse in just what the debuffs say and do and some consistency in how they handle certain mechanics.

Sure, FF14 could improve, but wow is comically worse at this. The encounters are mostly completely inconceivable without addons above LFR difficulty.

Minor correction. It was almost 8 months between 5.0-5.2, 10 months between 5.2-5.4, and 12 months between 5.4 and 6.0, putting the average at almost 10 months per tier.

Yes, covid slowed production down for most games and caused delays. Destiny 2 had to insert a false season. WoW has been really bad on release schedule. I don't think that's the reasonable schedule to gauge things by.

[Yarathir]

Just because Alliance Raids are forgiving doesn't mean they're not complex in design. Again, put an actual enrage/damage requirement on them and they would probably be harder than most normal raid content in that other game.

[Thoriangun]

Just because Alliance Raids are forgiving doesn't mean they're not complex in design. Again, put an actual enrage/damage requirement on them and they would probably be harder than most normal raid content in that other game.

Humour me, which Alliance raid boss is complex? I have been playing since 1.0 and since their inception in 2.0, not one was ever complex considering they were all cleared within the first hour or so entering the raids.

[NineSpine]

Humour me, which Alliance raid boss is complex? I have been playing since 1.0 and since their inception in 2.0, not one was ever complex considering they were all cleared within the first hour or so entering the raids.

You are still conflating complexity with chance of completion, which is inaccurate, and until you can demonstrate that you understand the difference between those things than any example provided will be misinterpreted. You are talking past everyone.

[Thoriangun]

You are still conflating complexity with chance of completion, which is inaccurate, and until you can demonstrate that you understand the difference between those things than any example provided will be misinterpreted. You are talking past everyone.

All alliance raid bosses is a very consistent dance that repeats it self over and over and getting hit once by something is easy to understand since its so visible.

There is no overlapping mechanics, I have done virtually all of the alliance raids on launch and every time on launch, the group has cleared it around an hour for first timers.

This is virtually most peoples experiences, an hour to down something new blind is not complex considering there is 23 other players.

[NineSpine]

All alliance raid bosses is a very consistent dance that repeats it self over and over and getting hit once by something is easy to understand since its so visible.

There is no overlapping mechanics, I have done virtually all of the alliance raids on launch and every time on launch, the group has cleared it around an hour for first timers.

This is virtually most peoples experiences, an hour to down something new blind is not complex considering there is 23 other players.

You are still conflating complexity and rate of completion. Until you put forth some small effort to attempt to understand where other people are coming from, discussing this with you is pointless.

Nobody is contending that they are hard or time consuming to complete. Why do you think someone who recognizes that they are neither of those things would call them complex?

[MsSideEye]

I'm a pretty habitual raid logger in both games so let me offer my POV. I love FF14's raiding content. It's fun, its flashy, and it's just challenging enough to be a good time. I love learning and clearing the fights and then taking a break or playing another game. I have a few other major hobbies so it's nice that it doesn't eat my time. I wish it was a little more dynamic and less scripted and sometimes a bit less obtuse on the mechanics.

As someone whose also raided in both games, having experience all the way up till WoD for WoW, I honestly find I prefer FF14's style if only because I can tell what's going on half the time. While that's not to say that WoW can't make it predictable when certain attacks come, but there were so many boss fights I could recall back then that were pretty much 'Oh hey, the boss put a spell on you that you couldn't really react to, figure out how to fix it'. 14, even in the earlier days, was all about signaling to the players what's going to happen. Nearly every single boss has a tell, be it their own body motion, the attack name, or what part of their model glows. I honestly don't remember seeing this in WoW until BFA and even then, I only saw it in dungeon bosses.

Yeah I super love when someone else makes a mistake so the entire party just wasted 12 minutes because one person died. What an epic experience.

Being a bit hypocritical here. Out of curiosity though, what fight does someone else in WoW make a mistake where it kills you (and not anyone else), and you sit on the floor for 8 minutes and wipe because of that single death? I tried thinking of examples but I couldn't come up with any.

I can give you about 2 dozen+ examples in FF14 of my actual example though.

To be fair in this case, while that can be more frustration especially for a new group, I find that honestly more engaging then 'Oh hey, you're dead, enjoy the floor while everyone else in the team actually enjoys doing the fight', which with how WoW does it's rezes is kinda what it boils down to. Also, isn't that kinda how a lot of End Game Mythic in WoW is for their enrage times now? To where a DPS dying pretty much means you aren't killing it before the boss goes berserk?

Blizzards encounter design has issues for sure, but I'm not sure coherent would be one of their issues. If anything it's one of their stronger points. FF14 could honestly learn to be a little less obtuse in just what the debuffs say and do and some consistency in how they handle certain mechanics.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to flat out disagree with you here. FF14 is perhaps the most explained and consistent MMO I've ever seen when it comes to mechanics. There are few other MMOS, much less games PERIOD, that I've ever seen that are as consistent as 14 is in teaching players what certain abilities do and how to react to them. They teach you even as early as ARR about things like stack markers, AOEs, and paying attention to the enemy models for attacks. They always feel like they're giving you the idea of how to avoid them and it's up to the player to actually do it right. WoW, especially in my older experiences, felt like I was having to relearn everything from scratch for each fight because what worked for one boss would be completely disregarded for the next in the exact same area.

Yes. It's why ACT shows me on average 20-25% of the people in the instance are not putting any effort in and yet we have no wipes and still clear.

I'd say this is actually more to how the rez system works for 14 more than anything else. In Wow, you get limited rezes. So that means something like LFG has to be so weak that even the most deadly mechanics hit with the strength of a foam bat to it's players. FF14's mechanics will kill you, regardless of how 'good' you are, if you just sit an afk. Can you still complete the alliance raid? Oh sure, there's no enrage timer so as long as you've got a tank and a healer alive you can beat it eventually, but I think there's a distinct difference between 'AFK and nothing happens' which is WoW's LFG and 'AFK, Die, and make the fight take much longer than it should' which is what happens in 14.

Minor correction. It was almost 8 months between 5.0-5.2, 10 months between 5.2-5.4, and 12 months between 5.4 and 6.0, putting the average at almost 10 months per tier.

A bit unfair to judge Shadowbringers in this respect, considering this is when the Pandemic hit. It's also why things like the Ultimate in Shadowbringers got cut. In fact, it's kinda amazing that Shadowbringers is so loved and critically acclaimed as it is, honestly, considering how much of their normal content had to be cut from development because of the Pandemic and other issues.

It took me longer to find a group to do BA than it did the clear the savage tier lol despite pouring over every instance, LS, FC, static, and discord I could find.

Last I checked, the Balance Discord (The main FF14 Raiding Discord) had an entire section dedicated to people who were wanting to do the raids connected to Eureka and Bozja? I know there is one that's completely dedicated to the Eureka one and even alerts players to when people are gathering to do a group for it. Is it rare then the other stuff? Oh hell yes, but they do exist.

Bleh, I hated them and I even like the Nier games, but mostly because they take so much longer than all the other 24 mans to complete especially when a quarter of the team is AFK.

Honestly don't understand the hate that the Nier raids get, honestly. Mind you, I've never played the games, so most of my experience is through 14 and cultural osmosis, but I enjoyed it, especially the final fight of the final raid, where we're literally having the Square Enix building thrown at us for an attack. I think I prefer the Ivalice Raids out of them all in terms of mechanics, story, and overall presentation, but that's with me not including the Endwalker raid with us only having a single tier of it thus far. And I'll tell you now... if they keep this up? It'll be my favorite, hands down.

Which are more enjoyable is subjective. The fact that wow has become an add-on fest is not.

This is a sad thing about it, at least back when I played. The fact that you were bared from pretty much any raiding without having addons pretty much doomed you to just to never raid. And frankly, the Item Level addon made it pointless to EVER pug.

Putting aside crystal tower, if you AFK in alliance raids, you inspect the floor for the rest of the fight. Some people do this, sure, but most LFR encounters as a DPS you can stand still and do your rotation and suffer no consequences.

Even the Crystal Tower raids will still murder you if you don't do mechanics just right. Yes, they're a lot more forgiving then anything in the following expansions, but I've still seen wipes to Ancient Flare, Cerberus, and Cloud of Darkness because people don't do what's needed.

Sure, FF14 could improve, but wow is comically worse at this. The encounters are mostly completely inconceivable without addons above LFR difficulty.

Pretty much what I said above. WoW's never been super obvious with the tells for a lot of it's mechanics. They got better as the years go on, but the community around Raiding got MUCH worse. Even someone like me, who loved raiding and raid LED back in the day found myself no longer doing it after Wod simply because the people within it were absolutely retched and it was impossible to find a guild that didn't implode in a few months or have such high standards that if you missed a single day, you were kicked.

Yes, covid slowed production down for most games and caused delays. Destiny 2 had to insert a false season. WoW has been really bad on release schedule. I don't think that's the reasonable schedule to gauge things by.

To be fair, Wow's release schedule was near perfect during Legion. But I think internal troubles that we're all WELL versed to by now, as well as crappy management on top of covid is what really hurt WoW recently.

[Yarathir]

Humour me, which Alliance raid boss is complex? I have been playing since 1.0 and since their inception in 2.0, not one was ever complex considering they were all cleared within the first hour or so entering the raids.

Good job literally not at all responding to what I've written here.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Ultimate's, we have 1 so far in Endwalker but guess what, SHB was meant to have 2 but only had 1 so we can only hope they actually add the 2nd one this expansion.

People seem to forget Covid was a thing. We'll be getting 2 for sure, they've said that is going to happen. In addition, while they've said it's not likely, they're attempting to get a third out to "catch up".

- - - Updated - - -

It took me longer to find a group to do BA than it did the clear the savage tier lol despite pouring over every instance, LS, FC, static, and discord I could find.

There's a group on crystal that runs every other weekend. Had like... no trouble finding it. But I suppose user experience may vary.

- - - Updated - - -

Humour me, which Alliance raid boss is complex? I have been playing since 1.0 and since their inception in 2.0, not one was ever complex considering they were all cleared within the first hour or so entering the raids.

Scathach, Thundergod Cid, Ozma, MATH BOSS, actually most "third" bosses of alliance raids tend to be the hardest and most complex. Those were all wipe fests the first few weeks until people learned the fights and geared up. And even then, Ozma remained a raid killer for most of HW until gear scaling allowed you to ignore the hardest mechanics. The fights aren't "hard" if you know exactly what you need to do with an experienced raid group. But if we're talking a group of randos? Tons of people overlap the meteor AOEs which after heavy bleeds, would wipe the raid ultimately. Now people overlap the meteor circles, the bleed goes out and healers shrug it off.

"Mechanical complexity" in this discussion is overall incredibly subjective and worthless to try and discuss. Neither of the two games have terribly "complex" mechanics for the sweaty players (Those of us posting about it on forums, and apparently we've all been in world 500 or better guilds?) but people had a lot of trouble with these fights on release. Give them enrage timers and they'd be difficult for the average player.

Alliance raids start out feeling like normal mode, and as people learn it and get better gear (and ultimately, the next expansion gear scaling makes their mechanics easy to ignore) it does start to feel more like LFR. At this point it almost f eels like trying to compare apples and oranges though.


One thing I will say, is that most static raiders I know think the alliance raids are fun, and they will frequently run them both for the tokens and to keep themselves fresh on their rotation.

EDIT: To reiterate what I mean about "mechanical complexity" being a worthless measure, some people find WoW's mechanics more intuitive, others find FFXIV's more intuitive. But how does one measure "mechanical complexity"? Number of mechanics per boss? How hard/easy it is to fully understand said mechanic? How long it takes to learn the mechanic? How long it takes to master the mechanic? How many steps are in the mechanic?

As soon as you define what is more complex with the above questions, it becomes a subjective measure. For instance E8S had what I consider some of the most complex mechanics more than any other fight I've done so far. The mechanics were all incredibly precise in terms of timing and positioning, on top of being super easy to mess up. E2 and E2S is another example. The time mechanic feels incredibly daunting at first, but once you know how it works, it's relatively simple. And then Ultimates are a whole other bag of worms. In most savage fights, you have to learn one mechanic at a time, each mechanic taking 30-60 seconds to fully resolve. In Ultimates, you basically have to learn, practice, and memorize exactly what you need to do and exactly where you need to be DOWN TO THE SECOND.

Honorable mention: Angry birds, aka E7(S)

[Wrecktangle]

• I run it every week to gear up alt jobs.
  Thank you for confirming I am correct.
• Which are more enjoyable is subjective. The fact that wow has become an add-on fest is not
  I mean I use literally 3 addons, I wouldn't personally call that a fest, but if you do sure. I know CE FF14 raiding we use 2 addons ourselves. Looks pretty subjective to me since ya know, YMMV?
• You need me to explain how healers can fail you and you end up dead in WoW?
  No this is actually a fair point, albeit not exactly a 1:1 comparison to my point. You would need multiple healers to fail to reach that state in addition to yourself (nearly all specs have healing and defensives), this isn't really applicable in FF14, outside of like 2 classes, one of which is a tank.
• I stated facts.
  I also stated facts, that kinda shot your point in the foot though.
• Then it's rad that they are optional, isn't it?
  For sure!
• Why should I care about your experience if you declare mine is spurious?
  Because I'm actually trying to have a meaningful discussion.
• I didn't say there weren't other difference. The role of addons is a major one. This isnt debatable.
  I know you didn't, I disagreed on the importance of addons. I raid CE mythic with 3 addons installed, and I raid CE FF14 with 2 installed.
• Making up a "community" that agrees with you isn't an argument. Alliance raids are raids by any definition. If you dislike them, that's great, but they are raids. I don't know where this weird impulse to redefine simple terms to make your arguments sound better comes from. I don't like arena in wow, but it would be really really weird for me to start constructing arguments that arena isn't pvp just to make myself feel better about disliking it.
  This is you not trying to have an honest discussion. I'm not making anything up, you don't have to look very far in this very post to see other posters sharing the same sentiment.
• Putting aside crystal tower, if you AFK in alliance raids, you inspect the floor for the rest of the fight. Some people do this, sure, but most LFR encounters as a DPS you can stand still and do your rotation and suffer no consequences. - and? I think that's the goal of someone who is AFKing lol.
• Sure, FF14 could improve, but wow is comically worse at this. The encounters are mostly completely inconceivable without addons above LFR difficulty.
  So the first time you saw E3S tsunami you knew exactly how it had to be resolved and it was intuitive? How about Lights Rampant? You saw it once and it made perfect sense? Yes, FF14 has stack markers and telegraphs that are very easy to understand and that's GREAT, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actual mechanics in the fights that are literally just debuff vomit that you have to screenshot and read outside of the fight to understand because there is near 0 chance of understanding it on the fly and getting it right. Not only that, but ANY mechanic where a player is down means you can't even use any information from that try because it's muddled because of the multiple people getting debuffs or targeted for things they shouldn't have.
  
• Yes, covid slowed production down for most games and caused delays. Destiny 2 had to insert a false season. WoW has been really bad on release schedule. I don't think that's the reasonable schedule to gauge things by.
  Both games are on a ~ 2 year expansion cadence, FF14 does more frequent patches for sure, but my raid tier analysis isn't wrong, if it is you're more than welcome to demonstrate it.

Wasn't sure best way to respond to this to conserve post space so I'm going to try this.

As someone whose also raided in both games, having experience all the way up till WoD for WoW, I honestly find I prefer FF14's style if only because I can tell what's going on half the time. While that's not to say that WoW can't make it predictable when certain attacks come, but there were so many boss fights I could recall back then that were pretty much 'Oh hey, the boss put a spell on you that you couldn't really react to, figure out how to fix it'. 14, even in the earlier days, was all about signaling to the players what's going to happen. Nearly every single boss has a tell, be it their own body motion, the attack name, or what part of their model glows. I honestly don't remember seeing this in WoW until BFA and even then, I only saw it in dungeon bosses.

I don't really want to talk about dungeon bosses, or the basics like stack markers and stuff. They're fine. I'm talking about complex raid mechanics since that was the scope of the original question per the OP. These mechanics are usually debuff vomit with obtuse descriptions, strange interactions, and inconsistent behavior. The way to figure these out is trial and error to figure out the correct resolution and then you'll try and figure out placement/groupings for it. In WoW when the mechanics begin overlaying over each other you can usually figure out most of the solution, and then it's just a matter of positioning, cooldowns, and space management.

To be fair in this case, while that can be more frustration especially for a new group, I find that honestly more engaging then 'Oh hey, you're dead, enjoy the floor while everyone else in the team actually enjoys doing the fight', which with how WoW does it's rezes is kinda what it boils down to. Also, isn't that kinda how a lot of End Game Mythic in WoW is for their enrage times now? To where a DPS dying pretty much means you aren't killing it before the boss goes berserk?

You find wasting a ton of time repeatedly more engaging? I suppose that's fair considering the alternative, but I don't think it's something to be praised (one way or the other TBH). I mean yeah, if you have someone dead from jump street you're not killing an end boss during prog.

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to flat out disagree with you here. FF14 is perhaps the most explained and consistent MMO I've ever seen when it comes to mechanics. There are few other MMOS, much less games PERIOD, that I've ever seen that are as consistent as 14 is in teaching players what certain abilities do and how to react to them. They teach you even as early as ARR about things like stack markers, AOEs, and paying attention to the enemy models for attacks. They always feel like they're giving you the idea of how to avoid them and it's up to the player to actually do it right. WoW, especially in my older experiences, felt like I was having to relearn everything from scratch for each fight because what worked for one boss would be completely disregarded for the next in the exact same area.

Again, we're not talking about teaching or low difficulty content mechanics. That wasn't the scope of the discussion. We were discussing end game raiding per the OP. In that frame - do you have any input there?

I'd say this is actually more to how the rez system works for 14 more than anything else. In Wow, you get limited rezes. So that means something like LFG has to be so weak that even the most deadly mechanics hit with the strength of a foam bat to it's players. FF14's mechanics will kill you, regardless of how 'good' you are, if you just sit an afk. Can you still complete the alliance raid? Oh sure, there's no enrage timer so as long as you've got a tank and a healer alive you can beat it eventually, but I think there's a distinct difference between 'AFK and nothing happens' which is WoW's LFG and 'AFK, Die, and make the fight take much longer than it should' which is what happens in 14.

Eh, they don't always kill you. Some did, and they got nerfed because people complained about it lol.

A bit unfair to judge Shadowbringers in this respect, considering this is when the Pandemic hit. It's also why things like the Ultimate in Shadowbringers got cut. In fact, it's kinda amazing that Shadowbringers is so loved and critically acclaimed as it is, honestly, considering how much of their normal content had to be cut from development because of the Pandemic and other issues.

I mean, everyone got hit I compared apples to apples here. I merely compared the games over roughly the same time period.

Last I checked, the Balance Discord (The main FF14 Raiding Discord) had an entire section dedicated to people who were wanting to do the raids connected to Eureka and Bozja? I know there is one that's completely dedicated to the Eureka one and even alerts players to when people are gathering to do a group for it. Is it rare then the other stuff? Oh hell yes, but they do exist.

I didn't say they didn't exist. I said I used the tools I had available to me and it took me less time to clear the current savage raid then it did to find people who wanted to do BA lol.

There's a group on crystal that runs every other weekend. Had like... no trouble finding it. But I suppose user experience may vary.

On Primal, didn't have any luck, but my weekends aren't as available for gaming as they are my other hobbies.

To reiterate what I mean about "mechanical complexity" being a worthless measure, some people find WoW's mechanics more intuitive, others find FFXIV's more intuitive. But how does one measure "mechanical complexity"? Number of mechanics per boss? How hard/easy it is to fully understand said mechanic? How long it takes to learn the mechanic? How long it takes to master the mechanic? How many steps are in the mechanic?

I don't think mechanical complexity is a worthless measure because it's hard to define. In fact, I'd argue that makes it very important. Looking at @Thoriangun 's argument I don't see very many complex mechanics in alliance raids. They are generally single solution and usually obvious. Mustadio's snipe? You either turn the opening or the not opening. You try it one way, if it doesn't work you try it the other. Orlandu's duskblade? You see circles, you stand in them or don't, one wipes you one doesn't. Add phases? Kill add, or wipe.

Cid and Ozma were not complex at all. Math boss I'll give you, but if anything that's an example that better helps my point earlier in the discussion. I do agree on E8S for sure. Lots of complex mechanics there, some incredibly obtuse ones too.

[Zoibert the Bear]

The poster was guilty of saying some dumb shit, but the piece you quoted I don't see anything bad about that take mind clarifying?

What the fuck a wall of quotes just flew over my house...

Also, it's obvious, please, tell me you are acting dumb. Please.

[Ghost of Cow]

What the fuck a wall of quotes just flew over my house...

Also, it's obvious, please, tell me you are acting dumb. Please.

I find that when someone can't articulate their point and instead falls back on "but it's obvious" it's not a great sign for the strength of their argument.

[Zoibert the Bear]

I find that when someone can't articulate their point and instead falls back on "but it's obvious" it's not a great sign for the strength of their argument.

This is sort of like the whole Nigerian prince thing you know. Filtering early goes a long way.

[Tojara]

I'm not sure what type of brainwashing exists, but holy shit the amount of addons that are cited to be required to do anything above LFR is humorous at best. Are there encounters from time to time that need advanced weak auras or are incredibly hard without? Yeah. But people citing that they are all but required (especially with the notion of LFR and above are being completely disingenuous). I don't even have WA installed when I play WoW, and only install it on select encounters that I know are pretty stupidly designed. Mythic Azshara was the last one I can really remember, with some nods being thrown at the Lords of Dread in the recent raid and the rune boss near the end of Sanctum (I stopped raiding after Mythic Azshara).

I can speak volumes of both FF14 and WoW encounter design, and both of them are excellent in their own ways. I don't run LFR because I think it's trash, much like I don't run Alliance raids in FF14 because I think those are trash as well. The only Alliance raids I ever did with consistency were the ARR ones because they're quick and efficient. Unpopular or not, I fucking hate the NEIR shit beyond belief and wish I could go back in time and get hours of my life invested in unlocking them, let alone doing them twice total. At least the ARR ones tie into the story , which was one of the major reasons I started playing the game to begin with (let alone trying to unlock everything).

The res system in FF14 is something I came around on with time. During the opening weeks of savage or most ultimate fights, having deaths that aren't planned is probably going to cause an eventual wipe anyway. Getting people back up when you're slightly over geared for savage, normal fights or most extreme trials isn't a death sentence and just allows the individual to still participate. It could work in WoW, but at the same time it all circles back to a DPS check anyway, just both games go about the DPS check in different ways. Usually in FF14 you don't lose because of throughput if everybody stays alive (well, almost always). In the opening weeks of FF14, especially doing savage in pugs (which is what I did), losing people on the second and third bosses usually meant you were going to be straining for DPS.

At the end of the day both games have enrage timers, they just do them slightly differently. Unless you lose a massive amount of people on individual pulls, WoW isn't going to be that much different than FF14. FF14 however can allow you to limp as far as you want in savage as long as the raid wiping mechanics don't rip through your group, or you inevitably hit that hard enrage. I think I prefer the 'limping' aspect a bit more, especially for mechanics that are either similar, or similar but slightly different because it allows an individual to actually engage with it again. Double edged on some other things though. I like that buffs last through death and you just start right in front of the boss. Dislike that nothing really feels like a dungeon, or castle (even if it means doing trash). WoW would certainly feel better if just every boss in the game would port you front of it again when you wiped though. Walk backs are sort of outdated IMO.

Again the game is worth your time if you like Endgame content, which is the whole point of the thread. I just think that depending on how hardcore you go about it, it's probably something you jump into for a month or two, then wait until the next major raid release like what 6-7 months down the line, before subscribing again. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I'd argue that's what you should do with most MMOs anyway.

[NineSpine]

I mean I use literally 3 addons, I wouldn't personally call that a fest, but if you do sure. I know CE FF14 raiding we use 2 addons ourselves. Looks pretty subjective to me since ya know, YMMV?

I know you didn't, I disagreed on the importance of addons. I raid CE mythic with 3 addons installed, and I raid CE FF14 with 2 installed.

The number of addons isn't what matters. What they are doing matters. In WoW, they are trivializing mechanics. In FF14 they are not, unless you are breaking the rules and using addons which are not commonly used by the average person.

This isn't arguable. This isn't debatable. The norm in WoW is to use addons that negate mechanics, such as DBM and weakauras. That is not the norm in FF14.

This is you not trying to have an honest discussion. I'm not making anything up, you don't have to look very far in this very post to see other posters sharing the same sentiment.

There is no honest discussion that begins with "I want to redefine a word to help my argument". Alliance raids are raids. Period. The word "raid" in this context predates graphical video games with raids. It comes from MUDs where players would fight large battle together in turn based text. Those were raids too. Make up a new word if you need a new word, but redefining terms to fit your narrative is not "honest" and calling someone dishonest for refusing your redefinitions exponentially increases the dishonesty.

This is like if I was into classic cars and said "I'm a car guy" and then someone else came along and said "I'm a car guy too, but I'm really into electric cars", and then I proceeded to try to redefine the word "car" to not include electric cars because I want "car" to only mean the old school combustion engine classics I like because my prestige of being a car guy is threatened by the reality that electric cars exist. It's horseshit. It's dishonest. It's arrogant. It's condescending. Move on.

So the first time you saw E3S tsunami you knew exactly how it had to be resolved and it was intuitive? How about Lights Rampant? You saw it once and it made perfect sense? Yes, FF14 has stack markers and telegraphs that are very easy to understand and that's GREAT, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actual mechanics in the fights that are literally just debuff vomit that you have to screenshot and read outside of the fight to understand because there is near 0 chance of understanding it on the fly and getting it right. Not only that, but ANY mechanic where a player is down means you can't even use any information from that try because it's muddled because of the multiple people getting debuffs or targeted for things they shouldn't have.

I've never used an add-on to deal with any mechanic in FF14.

Both games are on a ~ 2 year expansion cadence, FF14 does but my raid tier analysis isn't wrong, if it is you're more than welcome to demonstrate it.

In two years, in FF14 you will roughly get the following:

12 normal/savage bosses
2 Ultimate raids
8 Trials
12 Alliance raid bosses

That is 34 bosses, which is comparable to what you get in two years in WoW.